Well Denny is no slouch and Tech1 is usually totally correct, but I remember a little more. If you can find a '47-'48 distributor they had dual points and a flatter cap rather than the two bulbous round caps on the earlier distributors, but do you have a later block with 24 studs or the earlier 21 stud heads? I am not sure the later distributor fits the 21 stud block, in spite of a lot of interchangeable parts. If you have a 24 stud block that is better. If you have the later block it might actually be cheaper to buy a 4-barrel intake and a small 4-barrel (about 400 cfm) than to buy a rebuilt Stromberg 97? The last time I checked on the price of the 97 it was out of sight (I think I paid $17 for a rebuilt one from Pep Boys in 1954!). I think the first simple thing I would do in your situation is to just clean the plugs using a small blade of a penknife and regap them. That fix is much poorer than using new plugs but if the engine runs better with just the "penknife-plug-scrape" you know to get new plugs while you worry about the worn Stromberg 97. In the '50s it was common to "sandblast" the inside of used plugs, but I never found that to be any better than the penknife-scrape and new plugs are about five times better than either method. Just reminiscing back to when gas was $0.24/gallon and Pep Boys had just about any Ford part you needed ('32-'48 of course).

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder